WineCountryUA

The intersection of those two conditions is probably rather small and easily solved by having an image / screenshot of the card on your phone or any laptop / tablet / ..... Do once a year and done.
Doing customer requestable cards when not doing mass card distribution is an expensive option and probably not justifiable for the very limited situations.

willliamjia

You do not use UA APP, right?

DELee

Some folks aren't allowed to travel with company phones.

David

LIH

Caught a ~4 hour weather delay on my SAN > ORD flight this AM (the inbound never made it from the bad weather in Chicago yesterday). Called GS and asked them to interline me over to the AA flight at 7:15, which they of course refused. I'm not really upset about that because I know that's a big ask but ultimately I just refunded my $1,200 OW fare on UA and booked a cheaper R fare on that AA flight. On a Friday headed home, those 4 hours just matter a lot to me as its the difference of me getting home in time to play with my daughter a little and letting my wife sit down vs. showing up at dinner time. FWIW the GS phone agent(s) I talked to were pretty unimpressed. They basically said, it's weather so you can drive up to LA if you want and fly in coach on a 6AM flight or you can just deal with your delay.

Whatever, life is short. One more experience for me to travel OAL and realize GS isn't the end all. Safe travels everyone.

Dyce

I had a recent cancellation for the first leg of a 3 leg flight to the Caribbean. Best GS could do was rebook me TWO days later... So I drove through the night and picked up the second leg @ ORD. Didn't get any automated re-routing, no proactive calls, and the GS agents (I called twice) didn't seem too sympathetic!

Then coming back, there was a GS agent waiting for a semi-tight connection at IAH - E gates to B gates. Nope... I wasn't the GS passenger to have transfer assistance, but the ticket she had printed for the other GS passenger was for the gate RIGHT NEXT to my connection in B!! Talk about rubbing it in!

LIH

In 8 years as a GS I've had the transfer twice and once I didn't really need it but they must have been dead. I've had a baker's dozen connections that warranted one, a few of which I missed.

UA has a lot of statistics but the reality is I'm about to hit my travel stride. I'm 37 and my spend has been $35k+/year for a decade but is about to go to $100K/year pretty easily and I'm going to sprinkle the infield with that between UA/AA/DL (in order). Their algorithm will never even know. It's honestly a really interesting case study to me in consumer engagement. Airlines have so much information and they segment fares on their end to the Nth degree but they're so busy running this operationally intense business to really leverage that info. Like you'd hope an algo inside the company would see a $2K OW J fare domestically and that would trigger some kind of "oh, so that's the customer we want to retain, and there aren't many of them" but that's just not how it works. My BIS is reasonably high too, so it's just comical how little engagement I get from UA.

WVmike

I used to get the transfer service often I at IAD on my flights from CRW when heading south or east. Alas, united dropped our CRW to IAD service so I am left with only ORD now. I also had the transfer happen once at IAH and once at EWR.

spartacusmcfly

I'd argue, trying to make every connection seamless, regardless of fare paid, is a fool's errand. Would require a fleet of limos, expensive drivers who sit idle most of the day, an army of agents monitoring wind speed, airport delays, FAA holds, gate locations, etc. That effort would fail miserably.

Instead, what UA has wisely done, is put all their wood behind the self-service arrow. Over the past decade they have significantly expanded what travelers can do with no UA involvement. This has allowed them to save billions in labor costs, and reinvest those dollars into automation, routes, and jaw-dropping amenities like Polaris Lounges.

Ever wonder why your 737 lands at the int'l terminal at SFO? It's because UA's algorithms have determined that 14 people on the flight have a tight int'l connection. Sucks for the dude who paid $2K OW and has a tight connection in the E gates, but it's the right move overall.

Based in SF and have a meeting in Zurich? It doesn't matter if AA hires Beyonce to chauffeur me between gates in Dallas, I'm taking the non-stop from SFO. The robust route structure will command your loyalty, regardless of chauffeur service.

Also, careful assuming a $2K OW fare is so high margin that it warrants a chauffeured transfer. That driver at SFO is making $400/day and chauffeuring 4 people/day, the car is $50/hr, the unionized agent coordinating the chauffeur symphony is making a fortune, etc. Fully loaded, it's probably costing UA $500 to facilitate that connection. Instead, UA contributed millions to building an airside connection between terminals at SFO. IMO, a wiser investment.

Great companies are often defined by what the don't do, and I feel UA has wisely put excessive chauffeuring in the don't do bucket.

uanj

Let's hope that they are not the same algorithms which rebooked me on a flight two days later instead of a same day connection after a cancellation. And definitely don't want the algorithm writers who handle seat assignment changes when plans are swapped.

I agree with you on the airport transfers, I am not going to miss them since it has been so long since I had one.

But..... my personal view is that United seriously overestimates its service recovery abilities. And a messed up flight itinerary creates a long lasting memory, longer than a good flight experience.

np05

Here's a silly one: Did GS hand out the luggage tags for 2021/2022? I liked having those different city tags on my bag, but obviously these last two years are asterisk-worthy...

manstein58

did not receive anything

LifetimeGS

no city tags for me for 2021 or 2022

spartacusmcfly

It's going to sound funny, but this is where we as GS, need to catch up to UA's IT. When facing an IRROP they've put everything at our fingertips. We can see where our connecting flight is, where it's coming from, into which gate, ETA of the flight we're on, weather, etc. It's all free in the app -- no paid wifi needed. On top of all that, they release a blockbuster feature that allows us to text from the flight at no cost.

When facing an IRROP, we need to simply text what we want done (seat holds, rerouting, etc.) at our next destination. Every time I've done that, the answer has been, "Sir, yes sir." We wield so much power as GS, but sometimes we expect others to know what is optimal for us, and then get disappointed when their crystal ball doesn't sync with our wishes.

Send the text from the flight. Make UA's army march to your command. Flex your power.


I'm with you here. I'm convinced, UA's most incompetent software engineer works on this algorithm. How two people, on the same reservation, who are sitting together on a 1/2 empty flight, can then end up in two different corners of the plane after a swap is absolutely mind-blowing. It's like the software engineer is a loaner and has never traveled with anyone.
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So, yes, UA's IT still has room to improve

scott56

delta and aa are the same… however aa put 2 out of 3 together at least. 77w to 772 swap

np05

​​​​​​​Wait. there’s a number one can text?